Christianity Today, as a result of this attack, would be an embarrassment to
Billy Graham. Graham would have known better than to draw such a line in
the sand. The accusations toward President Trump made by Galli are not only grossly
exaggerated, but also impossible to retract, due to the unfortunate
connection he made to the cause of spreading the Gospel.

My assessment of Billy Graham's reaction to the article, were he alive, is more than just my own speculation. Read for yourself, how Graham's own son Franklin responded to the slander from Christianity Today:

Not only would Billy Graham have been disappointed in Mark Galli's decision to smear Trump, but Graham actually voted for Donald Trump in 2016. Galli's disgrace will follow him for a long time, for committing false witness against our country's leader and attempting to justify his treachery by dropping Billy Graham's name.

What a shame. I
will never trust CT again. This has nothing to do with any cult of personality. Christianity Today overplayed their hand, forgetting that no president who ever lived in the White House was of perfect character. Galli will now experience the opposite of what he thought he was going to accomplish.

Just what the motivation could have been for attempting to pull all evangelical support for Trump, I couldn't say. Regardless, Galli made a decision that not only will fail to disrupt Trump's constituency, but will instead corrode Christianity Today's credibility.

My deepest sympathy to the memory of the late Billy Graham,
who in my opinion was one of the most exemplary Christians to ever walk the
earth.

Wednesday, November 27, 2019

This doesn't affect me directly, as I'm married with a child. However, it does activate my intellectual curiosity.

What came first? Was being gay or bi always bubbling under the surface for everyone for millennia, and now finally being given its free pass by society? Or has the constant and deliberate exposure to same-sex sexual behavior in all forms of media for thirty years actually produced more same-sex sexual behavior?

Just like the broader debate about nature versus nurture in general human behavior, there has been much discourse for the last thirty years about whether or not being gay is genetic (born this way) or environmental (chose this lifestyle).

There are the two basic camps, with a little mixing of the two by more moderate speculators. However, due to the news and media 'campaign' I identified in the last post, whose tactics were literally lifted directly out of "The Overhauling of Straight America," published in 1987, one may reasonably wonder if environment isn't more of an influence than previously agreed upon.

There is an obvious response to this conjecture by the nature camp: all these additional numbers of people who are identifying as gay or bi always were anyway, but they were previously denying it out of fear.

To this, the nurture crowd could fire back: isn't it conventional wisdom to assume that if a person is raised in a Christian or Muslim household, he or she will usually become a Christian or a Muslim, due to indoctrination? Therefore being gay is most likely a result of environmental influences.

As with many controversial issues, at the end of the day, everyone seems to simply return to their original opinions.

In the case of the expressed sexuality of the general population, the advantages of being a same-sex enthusiast are obvious to denizens of YouTube. They consist of social media and entertainment industry clout, the concept of being completely free as opposed to the reality of being subject to a different set of restrictions than straight people, and allegedly fabulous fashion sense.

The key disadvantage has remained static through the ages:

Elective infertility, which is to say, the willful cessation of one's biological destiny as tab A or slot B.

While it's easier for a deliberately childless person to dismiss the value of having children, the truth for myself and most (not all) people I've talked to, is that the act of one's child being born completely changes the game forever.

It is so much more than biological imperative. It is beautiful, miraculous and perfect.

When I was a single man, which I was for most of my adult life so far, sex was a self-gratifying pastime. I was seeking love, but due to choosing inadequate partners, it would always devolve into a selfish exchange. I played just as much of a part in the selfishness, so I'm certainly not blaming the result solely on the other person. It was mutually agreed selfishness.

Getting married to my wife was the beginning of my transformation. It started me on the journey of what most would consider genuine love, which is typically characterized by the desire to put someone else in front of one's own selfish concerns.

My son being born was the next step. His birth was unlike anything else I'd ever experienced or witnessed in my life. It was equal parts amazing, impossible, intimidating, exhilarating, gratifying and humbling.

My experience was not unique in this regard. If you've never had children, just speak to people you know who have, and who have a tendency to speak honestly, and you will find their descriptions of the event are similar or the same.

There is great mystery tied into the whole family structure. In addition to the miracles of gestation and birth, there is the mystery known as "one flesh" referred to in the Bible.

It's the 21st century and we've amassed a great deal of scientific and other knowledge. Yet we still don't understand how a man and a woman specifically, when married, spiritually and physically joined together in love, could possibly become one flesh, or put another way, one entity.

Is it just some archaic mystical reference with no significance nor substantiation? Like the rest of our contentious landscape, the one flesh mystery either inspires or amuses.

Coming back to the original question, is it nature or nurture for same-sex sexual behavior?

Regardless of your individual answer, there's one thing you can be sure about.

The result isn't sunshine and rainbows, no matter how many times you are inundated with that message.

Tuesday, November 26, 2019

In the last five years I have seen things happening
that thirty years ago would have sounded preposterous. If people had
predicted these radical changes to our collective ethos
and morality, I would have laughed in their faces.

Once upon a time, two angels walked to a city to see for themselves what was going on within it.

When they got there, they had intended to spend the night with the citizens in the downtown area, but one very insistent man invited them to his house, so they went with the man.

The man and his family were very hospitable, and the angels talked with the man into the wee hours.

They asked many questions of the man, and the man answered as well as he could.

The man said that originally, the city was a wondrous place, where the people were free to do and think as they wished. They had at one point decided to trade a king for a president, and championed the idea that the people should be in control of their own fates, instead of being subject to the whims of a single entity or group.

Their city's culture slowly, through time, abolished slavery, gave women the vote, took away restrictions from minority populations, and achieved wealth beyond that of any neighboring cities. They conquered hunger, disease and war. They had forged a truly great city.

However, there was one tiny GROUP that felt it was still getting a raw deal. Even though they already achieved equality in their working lives, as well as their social circles, and many of them were very successful, they still felt like second class citizens because their private sexual practices were seen by most of the population as strange and undesirable behavior.

It didn't matter that the vast majority of the population believed in live and let live, and that what went on in someone's bedroom was their own business. Just knowing that most other people found their sexual behavior distasteful made this GROUP indignant and angry.

So they began a campaign to change the public's opinion about their private sexual practices.

At first, this GROUP, which had many members in the entertainment sector, began trying to be seen and heard as much as possible, but with absolutely no shocking or blatant exposure to their private sexual behavior. This was done on purpose, as well as never mentioning anything about their rights. Often their appearances in entertainment were amusing or ridiculous, but the point was the appearances were more and more frequent, in order to desensitize people and get them exposed as much as possible to members of the GROUP.

They deliberately chose the fringe of the city to feature in their presentations. They featured angry, hateful people, and made it look as though everyone who didn't approve of the GROUP's private sexual practices were frothing at the mouth and terrible bigots who should be shunned by reasonable people. In this way they could produce shame in the mainstream and a willingness to repent from crimes that mainstream individuals rarely ever committed.

In order to get more exposure, the GROUP had many quiet backroom liaisons with news people and entertainment moguls. In doing so, they managed to produce and publish all kinds of positive messages, often with their GROUP's name at the bottom, in order to associate their GROUP with worthy causes. This way they helped lessen mainstream resistance to the GROUP's private sexual practices by association.

Next they used public elections as another means to desensitize and familiarize. They would run symbolic candidates from their GROUP for every public position in the city. This was so they could run ads for their candidates, and demand equal time in a fair election. The ads would be openly featuring the fact that they were members of their GROUP, and then even if they pulled their candidates right before election time, they could still achieve the mainstream exposure they were seeking, without risking the negative publicity of potentially not winning the seats.

Now that their GROUP's exposure was more common, they began to put pressure on the entertainment sector to start featuring more of them in their productions, lest the producers appear to be bigots. Each decade the amount of featured characters grew exponentially. Many ads were designed to mimic the sentiments of religious ads, but using the GROUP's members instead of religious people.

They made clever ads about family harmony and understanding, and made sure that their GROUP was given credit for the ads. Many companies, who wanted to remain competitive and realized they were missing out on a potentially lucrative market, published ads tailored for the GROUP, in the GROUP's publications first, then later in mainstream publications (coded to appeal to the GROUP members without getting the public's attention), then finally completely openly about the GROUP in mainstream publications.

They produced content that switched the pro/dissenting positions, so that the person in the ad being discriminated against was not a member of the GROUP, but was going through discrimination that the GROUP was believed to go through. In this way they turned the emotional tables and made the mainstream imagine how they wanted them to perceive the GROUP.

And finally... in addition to tolerance, acceptance, equality and education, the GROUP began demanding participation.

This is when the dissenters (who were still in the majority, though forced to remain dissenters in secret) shrank back and allowed the GROUP, which literally comprised only 4 to 8 percent of the city's population, to take over the city. The citizens of the city bent the knee, and the GROUP took advantage of this magnanimous response and began demanding citizens to celebrate the GROUP's private behavior.

When the angels had heard enough from the man, they understood that their job was necessary, because while differences in ideologies were allowed, it was not acceptable to force others to do something God said not to do. Around that time, there was a pounding at the man's front door.

A large crowd of members of the GROUP had surrounded the man's house.

They shouted at the man to send the two men outside (they didn't realize the two men were actually angels). They wanted to take the two angels and practice their private sexual activities on them.

The man strenuously begged them to not do such a thing to his guests.

The GROUP was furious, and the raging mob yelled at the man:

"We let you live here and you are judging us? Now we're going to do worse to you than we were going to do to those two men!"

Just then the two angels grabbed the man and pulled him back inside the house. They blinded the GROUP outside the house so that they grew tired of looking for the man's front door.

How many of you realized from the beginning of the story that it was the ancient city of Sodom and not modern day western civilization?

As I said at the start:

In the last five years I have seen things happening that thirty years ago would have sounded preposterous. If people had predicted these radical changes to our collective ethos and morality, I would have laughed in their faces.

No one's laughing now.

"We shall sodomize your sons, emblems of your feeble masculinity, of your
shallow dreams and vulgar lies. We shall seduce them in your schools,
in your dormitories, in your gymnasiums, in your locker rooms, in your
sports arenas, in your seminaries, in your youth groups, in your movie
theater bathrooms, in your army bunkhouses, in your truck stops, in your
all male clubs, in your houses of Congress.... Your sons shall become
our minions and do our bidding. They will be recast in our image. They
will come to crave and adore us.... The family unit-spawning ground of
lies, betrayals, mediocrity, hypocrisy and violence – will be
abolished.... Perfect boys will be conceived and grown in the genetic
laboratory.... All churches who condemn us will be closed. Our
only gods are handsome young men.... We shall rewrite history, history
filled and debased with your heterosexual lies and distortions....
Tremble, hetero swine, when we appear before you without our masks."---Michael Swift Gay Community News, Feb. 15-21, 1987 (The same year the article "The Overhauling of Straight America" was published by Marshall Kirk and Erastes Pill)

Thursday, November 21, 2019

That article was published in 1987, and has served as an effective playbook for the various gay lobby organizations that have been very active in politics and media for the past 32 years. If you look at it closely, you will find strategies that are manipulative and repugnant, and they indicate more than once that the vilification of dissenters is required to lift up their own group. The authors actually admit in the article that the methods outlined are dishonest and fraudulent, but they apparently think that 'by any means necessary' is acceptable in their case.

Next, take a look at this article, which was published in the summer of 2016, three years before the recent Chick-fil-A capitulation due to pressure from GLAAD and other branches of the gay lobby:

When that was written, many people likely dismissed it as alarmist, and trusted that the benevolent champions of the LGBTQ cause would take the high road. Why wouldn't they take the high road, when they speak so strongly for fair and kind treatment for LGBTQ people?

It's possible that originally, all the gay rights lobby wanted was to be treated with respect. That reality has been established for quite some time; all of the 21st century at least. However, that is no longer the goal, the bar has been moved yet again. Now the goal has moved beyond acceptance to compulsory celebration, including public school indoctrination of young children to concepts they are too young to properly process, according to many concerned pediatricians. Here is one of them.

The troubling thing about the process by which LGBTQ activist goals have been achieved is that dissenting opinions are now punished if not changed. Somewhere along the line, the people in charge of gay rights activism forgot that you catch more bees with honey than vinegar. They were not content with just the previous propaganda techniques of making dissenters look like bigoted monsters. Now they use political pressure to drive businesses to bankruptcy if they don't jump on board the gay bandwagon.

Where will all this go? Depends on what you think is important.

After all, if a person doesn't believe God exists, then why would he or she care about someone's freedom of religion? If the public thinks religious people are all a bunch of bigoted neanderthals, who will care if their livelihoods are taken away?

According to Jesus, those who give mercy will get mercy in return. Perhaps the LGBTQ organizations should consider the consequences of treating others so poorly.

Chick-fil-A has been successfully blocked from expansion to San Antonio and Buffalo, and might potentially be blocked from Boston, San Francisco and Chicago. How were they blocked? Politicians, pressured by LGBTQ activists, have decided that donating to Christian charities is "anti-LGBTQ behavior."

Both of the above actions are based on the Christian (religious) beliefs of the charitable organizations, which include traditional views of human sexuality. The Salvation Army does not refuse anyone assistance if they are a member of any LGBTQ group. The FCA has no directive whatsoever in any part of its organization to discriminate against or harm any member of an LGBTQ group.

This is about a lot more than a deliberately mistaken perception of the charities that Chick-fil-A no longer donates to.

It's not about seeking tolerance, acceptance, nor equality.

It's about vilifying Christianity and attempting to make the world think that Christians are despicable hypocrites who hate gay people and are ruining society with their uptight, fascist beliefs.

So why would the LGBTQ activists (and their supportive constituents) want to accomplish that goal?

Because they're trying to get rid of the Judaeo-Christian God in the public square. See, that particular God is a bit of a pest for them, because despite many misguided attempts to rewrite or cast the Bible as hateful ignorant propaganda, they just can't seem to stamp out the light that shines in every man, woman and child who respects the Lord.

And make no mistake. The loving, all-inclusive, all-tolerant LGBTQ lobby hates that light. Light destroys darkness. Human beings, both gay and straight, love to live in the dark. Sin respects no gender, color, bank account, sexual preference or belief system. Sin lies in wait for you, not the other way around. And sin, foolishly considered by many to be outmoded, is relentless. No one escapes it.

Yes, there are people who call themselves Christians and hold up signs that say "God hates fags." But be wise instead of vindictive: in all groups there are hypocrites and self-righteous individuals, and Christians, being human like everyone else, are just as subject to those sins as any other section of the population. But same as criminals, the sign holders are the significantly tiny minority of the entire group.

Don't ask me how God feels about homosexuals. I can't pretend to know the mind of God. All I'm qualified to comment, based on the Bible and my reading of it, is that God loves all human beings, and homosexuality is no different than sex before marriage in terms of sin status. That would mean heterosexuals who have sex before marriage are the same as homosexuals in regard to sin. We all sin.

Here. Let me repeat that, lest you feel the urge to fire up the rage mob.

I said we all sin. There are so many sins, so many ways to disappoint God. Just why some people are hyper-focused on homosexuality I'm not sure. It's not as common as looking at pornography, for example. It's not as hidden as people who steal things large and small and don't get caught. It's not considered anywhere near as heinous a sin as murder, or molesting children. It doesn't have the same obvious fallout of an alcohol, drug or gambling addiction. It may or may not be as seemingly innocuous as eating pork.

You want to get mad at someone because they think that something you do or enjoy is a sin? Grow up. People have been calling alcohol, recreational drugs, sex before marriage, adultery and gambling sins for as long as those activities have existed. Those activities hold various degrees of enjoyment for many people, and if consenting adults want to do something alone or together and not force anyone else to partake, that's their business. It would become logistically bothersome for someone who liked to buy lottery tickets to concern himself or herself with every single person who thought gambling was a sin.

I mean really. What difference does it make to a non-believer if Christians think sex before marriage is a sin? Their belief only affects their decisions in their own lives. Someone who doesn't share Christian beliefs is free to have sex with a thousand people if he or she wants to. So why hate the Christian who thinks it's wrong? It's not like someone's thoughts ever stopped others from having all the sex they ever wanted. Even in the prehistoric days of the early 20th century, when being gay was still kept private, gay people were still having gay sex. They just didn't have a state sanctioned cheering section. Most rational adults support underage drinking laws, but does that stop minors from using alcohol? No, it doesn't.

Are thoughts truly daggers that stab the enjoyment out of life of others, or are they the precious possessions of every human being, regardless of where they reside on any spectrum? Oh wait! You want to talk about someone refusing to bake you a cake? Sure, that's rude, and could be considered insulting. But using our legal system to force them to bake you a cake? Get serious. Go somewhere else for the damn cake. Why would anyone want to purchase anything from the baker after being refused anyway? If someone told me their religion prevented them from making cakes for people who like to play video games, I'd be surprised and taken aback, but I'd simply leave with the thought that I'll give my money to someone else for the work, happy in the knowledge I'm not saddled with that particular belief.

The problem we're facing in Western Civilization in 2019 isn't that we're becoming more Right or more Left. The problem isn't Christianity or any other religion. The problem isn't actual hate groups like Neo-Nazis or Nation of Islam, that never accomplish much more than making fools of themselves. The problem we're facing isn't the growing divide between the one percent and everyone else. The problem we're facing has nothing to do with toxic masculinity, gender pronouns, systemic or individual racism, gun ownership, returning abortion laws to individual states, manspreading, mansplaining, capitalism, the republican party, conservatism, etc.

The real problem we're facing?

It's a force growing in our culture that wants to use fear and intimidation to stamp out anything disagreeing with it. Doesn't sound very scary or dangerous?

Not yet, but give it time. As a society we've been compelled to abandon judgment for tolerance, trade tolerance for acceptance, and now trade acceptance for the new paradigm.

The new paradigm is compulsory celebration, and nothing less will be tolerated by those who are currently successful in their efforts to shut down both your ability to disagree and your first amendment right to openly worship the God of your choice.

I wouldn't expect anyone to watch the entire twenty-seven minutes of this sh** show. But it would be wise to take a good look, regardless of your political leanings, and absorb what is happening right before our very eyes.

Yes, we are living in 2019. The most advanced civilization in the history of
the planet. A population that is experiencing the greatest wealth,
abundance, freedom and opportunity in history.

And this is what some of us choose to do with our lives?

From a dispassionate standpoint, as long as Antifa's worst antics continue at a relatively low frequency, they will remain little more than a circus attraction and a cautionary tale of how not to behave in a civil society.

But, if they keep taking to the streets and acting aggressive and obnoxious instead of peacefully protesting, there will surely come a day when the wrong person is in the crowd, believes he or she has nothing to lose, and has sufficiently fed himself or herself with an infuriating, long term video stream of these kinds of twisted confrontations. Forget reactionary groups like the Proud Boys; the mortal carnage by a solitary, mentally unstable malcontent will make Proud Boys fisticuffs seem like Sesame Street.

The title of this essay is referring to the phenomena we've all come to recognize from the Left: attributing the conservative sectors they hate with the very traits the Leftists themselves possess, and accusing conservatives of committing the very infractions against freedom the Left are committing by censoring speech, intimidation via social media, using legal pressure to cow everyone into accepting things that some individuals do not find acceptable, and of course, the now well known examples of Antifa physically harming people who disagree with them.

The two fellows who asked for Elad's personal information, along with the cameraman's, are obviously attempting to frighten them. Whether or not they successfully dox, and potentially harass, these members of the press is almost beside the point. The craven nature of hiding behind a mask and/or computer is evident. They see themselves as revolutionaries, but their actions are those of domestic terrorists in a free country.

These miscreants apparently have never experienced
any genuine danger. If they keep this aggressive,
disrespectful behavior up, they're going to start eating pavement, steel
and lead. Then, and only then, will the remaining ones admit the error of
trying to intimidate reasonable people by threats, doxing and violence.
At the end of it all, for all the sadness of their needless passing,
the knowledge that they created their own fate will be clear to anyone who
watched all this nonsense transpire thanks to the reporters they tried to silence.

Thursday, November 7, 2019

At first glance, a reasonable person should consider whether or not the charge is accurate. Due to the language YouTube used on the removed video page, one might be inclined to believe that the video was full of hate speech. You know, things like saying X are scum, or Y should die, etc. But was this really what the video contained?

No. Thank goodness Bitchute, the repository that does NOT censor individual opinion, has the same video on their site. You are free to watch the video there and make up your own mind:

Dr. Michelle Cretella, president of the American College of Pediatricians, discusses important issues regarding children and the transgender movement, from the point of view of a pediatrician, not a political provocateur.

I'd love to go off on an angry tangent here, but I won't. All one has to do is listen to her interview to understand the gravity of what's actually going on. It's no longer something that will go away if ignored, because the Texas legal battle over seven year old James Younger proves that the abuse of children is not off limits to those with a particular agenda:

You might say, "Wait. YouTube allows this video, so they can't really be censoring people who don't adhere to their preferred political platforms."

The problem with that conclusion becomes apparent when one considers the public visibility of any particular spokesperson. There's a very good chance that the people with agendas who troll YouTube looking for videos to flag just haven't gotten around to Van Meter's video yet. Dr. Cretella has been seen speaking about the matter on national news networks so her profile is easier to target, Van Meter has a lower public profile at this point. Here's Dr. Cretella on a recent OAN broadcast:

So... should you be upset about censorship of non-partisan, scientific content that sheds light on an issue that is fraught with bias and emotion, or about the content of the video itself, that shares professional medical information directly contradicting the politically correct perception of gender dysphoria?

Take your pick, but whatever you do, don't imagine the subject matter is a harmless fad, at least where children are involved. They can't protect themselves, we're supposed to be doing that. Let's not abandon their well being for misguided virtue signalling.

Tuesday, November 5, 2019

Either civilization was a product of evolution or it was a product of a
top-down influence like God. You can't have both.

If evolution is the
truth, and we evolved from primitive, survival-of-the-fittest
origins, then why are we still arguing about the same things we were arguing
about in ancient Mesopotamia, still killing each other, and still sexualizing children?

Shouldn't our historical course be incrementally exemplified by more kindness, more cooperation and less selfishness, if the evolutionary biologists and psychologists are correct that our instincts of cooperation and altruism were merely more successful survival strategies?

So then the next question should be:

If evolution is not true, and we received our moral perspective from God, then why are we still arguing about the same things we were arguing
about in ancient Mesopotamia, still killing each other, and still sexualizing children?

Shouldn't the fact that God gave us our moral tenets motivate us to continually progress to a more unified existence?

There is no contradiction in that regard. The Hebrew and Greek scriptures explain quite clearly why the human condition does not continually improve in those areas.

But that's the Catch-22. If you're a staunch defender of Darwin's core theory, you are duty bound to insist that those same scriptures are just the mythological fancy of a bunch of Bronze Age sheepherders and first century fishermen.

Either the secular humanists and evolutionary biologists are correct about the dawn of civilization, or they are not.

Sunday, October 6, 2019

With all due respect to the forgotten genius of David Gates, these words were not penned for a female companion, but for Someone much more important.

Lost and all aloneI always thought that I could make it on my ownSince You left I hardly make it through the dayMy tears get in the wayAnd I need You back to stay

I wander through the NightAnd search the world to find the Words to make it rightAll I want is just the way it used to beWith You here close to meAnd I've got to make You seeThat I'm lost without Your loveLife without You isn't worth the trouble ofI'm as helpless as a ship without a wheelA touch without a feelI can't believe it's realBut someday soon I'll wakeAnd find my heart won't have to breakIf we had love beforeWe can have it back once more

Monday, September 30, 2019

Here we are in 2019. That's two thousand and nineteen years since the birth of Jesus. More anger, jealousy, hatred, resentment and suspicion than we've seen for a long time. People doing horrible things to each other, and more frequently. Apparently getting rid of God in the public square didn't have the effect that the secular humanists thought it would. People are capable of good, but they are not good by nature. That's what we've learned from the secular approach.

People still argue about the existence of God. Atheists love to insist he doesn't exist, believers love to insist he does. But none of that matters. God exists; everyone chooses how to deal with that inexorable fact. Neither side argues logically. They both are merely defending the world they want to live in.

What are those two worlds? Let's postpone that for a moment.

For all my life (that I can remember), I knew God existed. I was drawn toward God, without any influence from my parents (they were non-practicing Catholics that never spoke about the subject). So we didn't attend church, didn't have religious friends, and just did our own non-religious thing.

In grade school I wanted my own Bible, so I asked my mom if I could get one from Goodwill. In junior high I gave my life to Christ, and of course, in the years that followed, because I had no real foundation to stand upon, I pursued worldly interests and fell by the wayside, like the sower's seeds that fell among thorns.

As a young man on my own, there were times I really wanted to get back to a good place with God. But life and my own selfishness would soon overtake those desires and replace them with worldly concerns, such as getting a girlfriend, trying to become a rock star, getting people to accept and like me, etc.

I had an important experience at the age of 25 that completely altered my understanding of my place with God. Being near death can certainly be an attitude adjuster. I came out of that experience with an important piece of information: God will do as God will do, and we are all but arrogant potsherds to the mysterious and merciful Potter.

Nevertheless, time went on, I grew older, eventually got married and had a child.

I tried my best to toe the line, but in retrospect I was really quite pathetic in my failed attempts to stay with God. I still hoped that my efforts would make a difference with my life and the lives of those I interacted with. Sunshine and rainbows, that was the message. God is in charge, God will take care of everything, God is truth.

All that is true, most certainly. But there was one tiny problem. I was fooling myself regarding my eternal destiny. About who I really am.

I have met people I know are going to be with God someday. I can't properly explain how I know, but I know. I can tell you they are few and far between, just like the Bible says. "Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it."

What are they like? Well, I can tell you what they're not like: they're not rough, not aggressive, not violent, not selfish, not cruel, not judgmental, not proud, not vain... and definitely not decadent. You disagree? That's fine. Just remember we're all geniuses at self delusion. Many people are mistaking their road to Hell for a subjective moral high ground.

Yes, this is anecdotal, yes I have no tangible proof. Some people think they can identify who goes to Hell, but I think that's nonsense. No one really knows who goes to Hell, because that destination is not ours to decide for others.

I have confidence I can tell who goes to be with the Lord (Heaven), because I realized recently that I was exercising cognitive dissonance on the subject. More simply put: I would guess most people think they're right with God, because they "know down deep inside" that they're "good people with good intentions."

However, when looking at myself with critical eyes, based on things I know about myself, I realize that despite anything kind or good I may have done, my eternal destiny is not Heaven, no matter how much I might wish it to be so.

The next question is: so if that's true and you know it for sure, what do you do with that?

My answer is simple: live my life, respect God and others to the best of my ability, and just accept the fate that awaits. Am I happy about it? Obviously not. Am I angry at God? No. God is God. The person that I am is the person I am, regardless of my wishful thinking, or attempts to change. And those people who will be with the Lord someday? I wish them all the happiness they deserve.

We are not the Creator, we are the created. Our responsibilities to each other are only square one. Most people think they don't deserve to end up in Hell. But a significant portion of them are wrong.

Honesty about one's self is probably the hardest thing for everyone to address.

Oh, and the "two worlds" thing mentioned earlier? Despite the fact that I don't think I'm going to Heaven, I still prefer the world with God. Why?

Because that's the world that gets righted eventually, and that's more important than my comfort.

Wednesday, September 25, 2019

A customer came up to me last night asking about a product we did not carry, but one he said was available at Walmart. I apologized for his inconvenience, and he took the exchange in a strange direction.

He said he had no interest in making the "richest family in America" any richer.

I thought, okay, everyone's entitled to an opinion.

Then he continued with what I thought was a finished conversation, and related an anecdote regarding cashiers at Walmart asking if customers wanted to donate their change to a charitable organization for children.

I said, "Cool."

Then he said, "Why don't those rich people donate their own money instead?"

So I asked him a question:

"Do you think the rich people should donate money to charity instead of the rest of us?"

He answered, "Yes."

I responded by saying, "Interesting," and backed away.

There have been many times I've disagreed with those in power about various issues. The disparity in quality of life between the one percent and "the rest of us" is obvious.

However, referencing the success of the rich as an excuse to release oneself from the responsibility of looking after others is a grim example of self-righteous hypocrisy. I fail to see the moral high ground in that philosophy.

If Earth is so fragile, why do I have to fight weeds every year, all summer long, and even cancer-causing herbicides can't stop them? This is no joke. I literally cannot stop them from invading my terrace and lawn every single year, no matter what I hit them with, no matter how many I pull up, no matter what I do to block, discourage and destroy them.

As Candace Owens has observed regarding media-induced paranoia about racism, am I the only person who judges reality by what I actually experience?

It seems that Global Warming has been a concern since the early 1980's, when world aggregate average temperatures were breaking 100+ year records. Much has been ado about melting polar ice caps. Over twenty years ago, a well-known movie called "Waterworld" was released (1995), demonstrating what a future with melted polar ice caps would look like: everyone lives in boats because dry land has been submerged.

Even if Waterworld turned out to be wildly overstated, the polar ice cap melting actually has been happening non-stop and at allegedly dangerous levels since the early 80's, so why haven't the coastlines already been encroached by noticeably rising water levels? I mean any at all?

As we approach our third decade since Global Warming was first being presented as a grave danger to the world, why is it the only level we've seen rise is the level of hysteria regarding our impending doom?

Somehow, despite 30 years of no coastal submerging, apparently the remaining 10 to 12 will add enough water to force panic-ridden migration, and destroy Greta Thunberg's future with "mass extinction."

Friday, September 20, 2019

Anyone interested in facts instead of vindictive emotion can surmise our
society is being subjected to a divide and conquer strategy. How else
could respected institutions be promoting such ludicrous ideas as
toxic masculinity, the world ending in 11.5 years (yes we're going to keep
track), systemic racism in a country that majority voted for a black president, and
"anti-hate" propaganda in a country that is disproportionately obsessed
with pansexuality in movies, television, books, music and art?

How else could otherwise intelligent, rational people of different worldviews argue so vehemently and venomously about things that don't resonate with most of the population? And why are both sides of the political fence so filled with fear and dread?

The astute response to this is: what would be the motivation for the elite wanting the public to fight
over nonsense?

The answer is unexpected: as technological progress allows
the elite to incrementally replace the human workforce, the slow nature of that
development demands that it be allowed to flourish and continue
uninterrupted by public concern. We don't have time to watch the people in charge while we're fighting with each other.

Today we're asked to stop eating hamburgers, stop riding in planes and
cars, and stop having children. Tomorrow we won't be asked, we will be told.

The elite are now, and will
be in the future, in charge of all the automated systems, including AI
systems, which will eventually replace our workforce. So when the elite,
who control the means by which all labor is performed (by robotic workers,
such as the Japanese factories of today) decide that the rest of the
population is not worth sustaining anymore, how do you think that will
play out?

All this political correctness controversy is just a
diversion to keep our eyes off the inevitable. Read Theodore Kaczynski's parable called "Ship of Fools." In a world where humans are
considered expendable bio-matter, there's no room for God or the
uplifting of the human spirit. I'm not one for making predictions, but
I'd say humanity's history is drawing to its close, and not because of
plastic straws, cow farts or melting ice.

Also, do yourselves a favor and read paragraphs 171-179 in the essay called "Industrial Society and Its Future" (the paragraph numbers are displayed in the document). The media rebranded it as "The Unabomber Manifesto."

Yes, Theodore Kaczynski was the Unabomber. Yes, he's in prison for murder. However, most people aren't aware that quite a few publicly respected entities(such as Ray Kurzweil, Bill Joy, et al - some references below) agree with the logic of Kaczynski's cogent premise regarding technology in the aforementioned paper. Yes, it was wrong for him to bomb people, but his essay's arguments would be no more or less valid had he never harmed a single human being.

Monday, September 16, 2019

I just finished watching The Frame for the third time on Amazon Prime. For the last three days I've felt compelled to watch it each night before going to bed.

Brilliant. Just absolutely brilliant.

Through taking many chances on late nights with movies I've never heard of, and sometimes ignoring reviews due to subject matter, I've managed to discover a handful of independently produced diamonds that I will forever cherish. The Frame has already permanently engraved its place on that short list.

With The Frame, I was initially intrigued by two things: that it was the next successive full length movie by the Winans's, after their altogether original and touching film called "Ink," and the fact that it either garnered 1 star or 5 stars on Amazon, with not a lot in between.

The Winans's themselves are to be admired and supported. I watched an interview with both of them, and their situation as independent film makers with no substantial Hollywood 'backing' thus far is sobering. No, they're not starving, but I find it odd how a filmmaker such as Terrence Malick, whom I also respect and admire, makes beautiful but much less accessible movies, and yet has considerable Hollywood money and many big stars waiting in line to be in his projects.

To that end, as there is no DVD to purchase on Amazon, I'm going to visit the Winans web site this week and buy the deluxe package for the sole purpose of supporting their exceptional work. They've made three full length movies in fifteen years, and I'm sure they'd be more prolific if the proper recognition were administered.

Their film Ink, released in 2009, was deservedly given 100% from six critics on Rotten Tomatoes. The Frame, released in 2014, has no critics weighing in on it at all on the same review site. I find that strange and perplexing, as they seemed to love Ink. The audience gave Ink an overall score of 81%, and inexplicably gave 70% to The Frame. Yes, Ink seems to have been more popular, and it is a great movie.

But The Frame is no Ink. Not even in the same ballpark. It is a far, far greater accomplishment. The Frame does
no less than create a brilliant allegory that effectively addresses the mystifying,
frustrating, bewildering and glorious relationship of Man and God. Jamin Winans pulls this feat off so well, apparently many Ink fans just didn't know how to approach the subject matter.

As for The Frame, so many details I could comment on. Things that were so clever, so inspired, so well thought out and so emotionally upheaving, that "mind-bending science fiction thriller" becomes a worst case attempt at properly describing the profound nature of the film. The name of the city it all takes place in is merely square one. But if I were to go on about all these things, I would end up sounding starry-eyed, and honestly, I'd also end up spoiling some of the shining moments the viewer gets to discover.

The movie is well made entertainment. But it's also an experience that either speaks directly to you and makes you aware of yourself as a humble, naked creation of God, or it befuddles you as you try in vain to decipher what on the surface appears to be a confusing cinematic journey. Quite an accomplishment for a film that is not considered a 'Christian movie.'

Jesus spoke in parables on purpose so that only those who sought truth would understand, and I expect those who appreciate this movie would share that same understanding.

Friday, September 6, 2019

Depending on the 'side' you choose in terms of political correctness in 2019, you are either aware of how conservative voices are being vilified and banned, or you think that concept is just false hype perpetrated by whiny Right wingers who can't take the truth.

Seeing the truth of the matter used to be as easy as looking at the like versus dislike ratios on YouTube videos. However, with YouTube's ever-increasing tendency to remove comments, videos and entire channels, it gets more difficult to find how the majority of viewers genuinely feel about something.

An excellent still-existing current example of the difference between the media and the public, are the ratings shown on Rotten Tomatoes for Dave Chappelle's Sticks and Stones show.

In the show, Chappelle's societal provocations, which happen to be funny due to their contemporary relevance, are received with polarity, as witnessed by the conspicuous disparity between the critic (media) and audience (public) ratings.

Wednesday, September 4, 2019

A scant two days after I encouraged everyone to give Soph's vulgar red-pilling a try, I find to my dismay she had pulled all her own videos off of BitChute and signed a contract with Gavin McInnis to restrict them behind a paywall known as freespeech.tv.

I apologize to everyone for my premature promotion of her. She is only fourteen years old after all, and as she becomes an adult, she'll likely recognize the mistake she's made, and get herself unbound to the contract she surely entered. Are Gavin McInnis and Milo Yiannopoulos grooming her for some political puppet strings that they control? Who knows.

I did see potentially great things in her future. Perhaps they are still there, I couldn't say.

Her own actions in joining freespeech.tv have helped Google accomplish its original aim when it cancelled her YouTube account: Soph has been effectively censored, because she will not even come close to the audience she would have had by staying on BitChute.

Most people won't pay $120 a year for things they can get elsewhere for free, brilliant or not.

She could have at least used an alternative method to get payment for her work. Word is she was doing very well on Patreon before they cancelled her account, so there's no shortage of fans willing to assist her.

Regardless, an exceedingly disappointing turn of affairs. What a shame.

Sunday, September 1, 2019

Of course! YouTube doesn't even attempt to appear nonpartisan in their "community guidelines" assessments anymore. They pretty much just swing their self-righteous sword and lop off dissenting heads.

I realize that everyone on the Left, and some left-leaning moderate liberals, might agree that they need to silence a 14 year old conservative girl who uses vulgarity and intimate details of the sometimes shocking lives of teenagers in 2019 to intellectually ridicule the Left's bizarre and corrosive agendas.

Observe this hit piece that effectively quotes Soph out of context with the express purpose of painting her as a Right-wing extremist. They even provided sound bites in a section below the article to make her seem like a racist, murderous radical, as opposed to a 14 year old gamer who happens to make frivolous statements that clearly would never be acted upon by anyone, including herself:

However, despite dismissive hand-waving from some, the consistent censoring of conservative voices continues unabated on YouTube, which is of course ultimately the work of Google, who owns it.

But fear not! Google is slowly steering the steamroller that will one day push them aside for other digital services that do not lean so far in one political direction.

For example, Soph copied her content from YouTube to BitChute, the largest and fastest growing competitor to YouTube. On BitChute, you may find material that is offensive to both the Left and the Right, but what you won't find is censorship based on politics... you know, the way YouTube used to be before Google bought it and added jackboots and biased algorithms to it.

You'll notice there are only 38,000+ subscribers so far on Soph's BitChute channel, as compared to the significantly larger subscriber base she had on YouTube before they axed her. But this is not a real problem in the long run. As more people find out about and use BitChute (much the same as savvy people making the wise choice and using Duckduckgo for their search engine instead of Google), her numbers will rise again.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think hearing a 14 year old cuss and colorfully deride teenage anal sex is the best that the Internet has to offer. But what Soph's critics completely miss (or deliberately ignore out of fear) is that her intellect is formidable, and her views are a direct reflection of many others from her generation. A generation referred to as Generation Z, or "Zoomers," a deliberate rhyme of "Boomers."

Generation Z has been written up in Forbes and other magazines, most notably because Zoomer politics lean further to the Right than several previous generations. Some writers have commented that they could possibly be more conservative than the World War II generation. Perhaps not in every area of life, but in many of the areas that are currently overly influenced by Marxist social engineering from the Left's elite.

I think Generation Z is worth keeping an eye on. They are our future after all, and since they grew up with the Internet, they know that no rational human being who wants the truth about anything gets all information from one source.

Soph's commentaries are sometimes shocking (at least for us older folks), often amusing, and always keenly astute in terms of what the world is offering her generation. She has a bull**** meter that is impressive and very finely tuned. And for this to come from a 14 year old, I'd say the future looks brighter than the Left's fear-and-hate mongers would have you believe.

Give her videos a try. You'll laugh a little, choke a little, and learn a lot more about your children's points of view than you realized was relevant.

Tuesday, August 6, 2019

I received three emails in my spam inbox sometime in the wee hours. What made them special?

Each allegedly originated from an entirely different email address, each with its own server (which I won't share, because in all likelihood they were harvested by scammers). The text of each email contained a different reply-to address that was different from the allegedly 'sent' address. All three reply-to addresses were the same sort of suggestive name: "passionatetigress88@gmail.com," "lionesslonely1988@gmail.com," and "beautekitty88@gmail.com."

The text from all three emails was identical in content, but each attempted variation by the way the paragraphs were structured. The contents of all three were:

Hello!
I'm a modest girl and do not know what to write, but for the sake of happiness, i need to overcome my fears.
My name is Lola, i am 30 years old now.

We live in the modern world and many people love to look for a soul mate over the Internet.
I consider myself as a determined, honest, cheerful.
Most importantly is the fact that my heart is open for love!

In the next letter I will be able to tell you more about me and of course will send my photos.
If you are interested, please write to my personal e-mail - [email address here]
Lola.

What struck me the most about this is that the culprits who are utilizing this deception for nefarious purposes aren't in the least bit clever.

Think about it. Why go through all the trouble to create a false identity, imbue it with allegedly enticing elements for some lonely 30-something (or more insidiously, a much older age range of those who may think they could actually encourage the 'poor girl'), spoof Sent addresses with illegally harvested email addresses, create new email addresses on Gmail to use for the actual scam correspondence... and then send three of them out in succession, so that any person with two functioning neurons could surmise they were being conned?

Better yet, as these emails all came in at different times during the early morning hours, how likely is it that there is a central producer of this humbug who makes it available, and then a bunch of low IQ, wannabe America-fleecers living outside the United States who grab it and use it like a Borg collective that literally can't entertain an original thought?

If these are the dangerous 'hackers' so many live in fear of, I'd say go ahead and get a good night's sleep. Real hackers don't waste their time on this sort of nonsense, they're actually solving legitimate problems and puzzles with their skills. Email and phone scams are the purview of the pathetic.

For an amusing demonstration of how truly bereft of a clue these digital grifters are, here is some discourse between a phone scammer and someone who routinely hacks them and mocks them on YouTube (warning: some foul language):

Wednesday, June 5, 2019

No matter how you spin it, the deep, intense hatred of Donald J. Trump is real, and millions of otherwise intelligent people practice it.

In a rational and ethical world, it is delusional and dangerous to believe hating someone is a virtuous act.

A few stubborn critics might want to pull out the Hitler reference, insisting that it is virtuous to hate evil.

Most reasonable people would agree.

However, Hitler was a merciless murderer of millions of innocent people. Trump is merely an arrogant tycoon.

Let's try some honesty for a change, and stop pretending that the man the mob just lynched must have been guilty if he's now hanging from a rope.

"For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. Do
not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his
brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil
and his brother’s were righteous.

"Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him."

Tuesday, June 4, 2019

Many conservatives in the U.S., who are normal, hard-working, family-centered people (very similar to the non-crazy counterparts in the liberal camp), are anxiously steeped in various levels of concern regarding the Left's ubiquitous carnage of traditional values.

The Left's corrosive agenda, over the course of many decades, is nearing the boiling point in terms of conservative society's ability to maintain cognitive dissonance regarding tolerance of thought police while still holding fast to the tenets that brought this country from a collection of adventurous vagabonds to history's greatest superpower.

I had a liberating thought about the whole mess tonight.

The reason there is so much repression of individual thought in 2019 is because the wisdom of the crowd has been manipulated astutely by social engineers whose goals do not include the continuance of America as a democratic republic. While that statement may be soundly debated by polarized pundits in the public square, the reality remains that a cursory survey of the issues deemed most important by society reveals moral ethos has changed radically in the last half-century.

The principal reason things have reached such a level of ire and tension is because the argument shifted from opinion to character, and the crowd will always press upon the iconoclast.

In 2019, the iconoclast has no interest in the endorphin rush of social media, nor the electronic gadgetry associated with it, and is not moved by the crowd's attempts to cajole one into purchasing it.

In 2019, the iconoclast tends to avoid watching the news, because the agitation it produces is not preferable to the alleged ignorance of being 'uninformed.'

In 2019, the iconoclast still may enjoy movies or television, but tends to stop watching when political agendas are woven into the story. As this is more often the case than not, more time is spent reading books, playing video games, and enjoying the company of other human beings.

In 2019, the iconoclast believes in recycling and being conscientious about the environment, but doesn't live in fear that plastic bags, carbon dioxide and bovine flatulence will exterminate us all in 12 years.

In 2019, the iconoclast doesn't give two cents about skin color, regardless of pressure to view some colors as more deserving of positive recognition than others.

In 2019, the iconoclast doesn't think either gender is better than the other, but does recognize that the two genders are very different and both deserve to be celebrated for their respective differences, as two halves of a cohesive whole.

In 2019, the iconoclast believes one should respect all other human beings, but does not believe that people should be legally forced to use pronouns that contradict the reproductive equipment possessed at birth, if they prefer not to use them.

In 2019, the iconoclast knows that encouraging prepubescent children to identify with the opposite gender, when historically 80% of children suffering from gender dysphoria simply grew out of it, is irresponsible, foolish, and potentially permanently damaging to child and teen psyches via misguided counseling and prescription hormones.

In 2019, the iconoclast believes that buying eggs from chickens that don't roam free, or eating a McDouble, or preferring to live without a four-legged companion, does not equal hatred of animals.

In 2019, the iconoclast understands that guns are merely tools that the person holding them decides how to use, and that taking them away does not erase an individual's desire to act on murderous impulses.

In 2019, the iconoclast thinks all should be allowed to pursue life, liberty and their own happiness, regardless of sexual or religious orientation, but does not believe that public campaigns to vilify those who object to some behaviors are appropriate in a free society.

In 2019, the iconoclast understands that the fringe will never run the show, and special interest groups will never be able to permanently legislate morality, no matter how hard they try, and no matter how many people they bully and publicly shame.

And now, in 2019, the iconoclast is being multiplied by common sense. This is the nature of human beings. Most people just want to get along and live their lives, but at the same time, those same people have a limit to how many times the mob can put their fingers to their lips and ominously threaten, "Shh!"

The good news and point of this essay:

The lemmings that make up "the crowd" must be given direction; this is the direct opposite of an iconoclast, who refuses to let peer pressure make up his or her mind.

When the boiling point mentioned above occurs, the lemmings will merely shift direction with the breeze, and the breeze will flow conservative again.

This isn't wishful thinking, it's just history endlessly repeating itself.

Wednesday, May 15, 2019

Not everyone appreciates the entertainment value of B movies, but I think I figured out today what can make them subjectively compelling.

Genre.

I like movies with fights in them. Cheap Chinese Kung-fu flicks, high-budget action films, hand to hand combat scenes in any movie. I like revenge themes because the good guy gets to kick the bad guy's butt at some point, which often never happens in real life.

Today, via Amazon Prime, I watched what many would consider an unwatchable movie called "Showdown," starring Billy Blanks and actors I don't recall seeing before.

"Fleccas Talks" is a YouTube channel that features a friendly young man named Fleccas, who goes to public gatherings where a conservative entity is publicly speaking, in order to interview persons from all perspectives regarding the event.

I've watched many of Fleccas's uploads, and they are mostly amusing. Of course the videos are edited to a pro-conservative agenda, that's beside the point. Persons who claim that his work is merely deceptive propaganda haven't actually watched his videos. Yes, he's conservative, but that doesn't make him wrong, it merely makes him a target.

Something happens in this video that got me to thinking, and I've cued it to the part I'm referring to:

So yes, hitting someone's hat off of his or her head isn't all that physically threatening. I suppose it could be considered assault by the letter of the law, but it would be hard to take seriously in a municipal court. In most people's book it's just plain disrespectful. When I saw the young woman do it in the video, all I could do was shake my head. When I saw the other woman daring the young man to "do something," all I could do was shake my head again.

However, what occurred to me while I watched this happen was a bit darker.

Knocking MAGA hats off of heads isn't a new thing anymore, and isn't all that uncommon. I'm somewhat confident to suggest that it only happens to people who don't look threatening enough to retaliate, indicating the general cowardice of those who do it.

But as with all predictions based on statistics, it's a numbers game. To put it more bluntly:

Eventually, on one sad and unfortunate day, someone who feels empowered by the crowd, or their friends, or some tweet, or CNN's hate-mongering, is going to knock the hat off of the wrong person's head. The wrong person who is either mentally ill, having an exceptionally bad time of it, or one step from the edge.

The gun will come out, the last expression on the face of the person who knocked the hat off will be surprise, and the Leftist news media will have a field day reporting on the "angry, evil, gun-toting" conservative who was bound to commit such an act eventually due to his or her preference for the "racist, hate-mongering" Trump.

I don't think the people who pick on others wearing MAGA hats have fully thought through the ramifications of their actions. But why do we have to wait until something turns permanently ugly?

Just stop. Respect others, whether or not they disagree with you. You gain nothing by showing disrespect to strangers, and on one anomalous day, you could lose everything by doing so.

"Nextdoor" is an invaluable tool for communities to reestablish their status as communities, in this digital day and age. Block parties and other face-to-face activities have gone by the wayside, so apps like Nextdoor give people a sense of that lost community. In any community, there will not be one hundred percent agreement about anything, much less how people view other human beings.

With this article (written by Rani Molla, reporter for Recode and formerly Bloomberg Gadfly) Vox is attempting to turn the reader against a positive force for the community by, once again, playing that tried-and-true, unassailable, and punishable-by-shame-if-resisted racism card.

The article, besides referring to Nextdoor as a "fear-based social media app," which immediately paints a very one-dimensional picture of it's users, also states that Nextdoor's Crime and Safety section is a "hotbed for racial stereotyping."

If you read the Wired piece, you will find in the fourth paragraph the following information:

"Caught off guard, Tolia asked his neighborhood operations team, which handles customer service, to review Nextdoor postings. They discovered several dozen messages posted over the course of the previous year that identified suspicious characters only by race. By some measures, it was a tiny issue. The site distributes four million messages daily."

In the world of perception, journalists know all too well the power of words to manipulate. To refer to "several dozen" messages over the course of an entire year as a "hotbed," when the total messages for that same year amounted to one billion and four hundred and sixty million (50 messages as compared to 1,460,000,000 messages), is nothing short of exaggeration in the highest order.

We are told that "by some measures" it is a tiny issue. By what other measure is it not a tiny issue? I'm a bit puzzled by that statement. Later in the same paragraph, Tolia (founder of Nextdoor) expresses his dismay that even a tiny problem can cast his service as racist. Sure, in the minds of those who think the fringe are as relevant as the average user. Most adults are coherent enough to know this is not true.

Coming back to the Vox piece, there are other manipulative statements, some allegedly backed by handy graphs, such as "Public perception of crime rate at odds with data," "Apps can fuel a vicious cycle of fear and violence," "Citizen — whose previous form was called Vigilante and which appeared to encourage users to stop crimes in action," "These apps have become popular because of — and have aggravated — the false sense that danger is on the rise," "Examples abound of racism on these types of apps, usually in the form of who is identified as criminal," "Apps didn’t create bias or unfair policing, but they can exacerbate it," "These apps can also be psychologically detrimental to the people who use them," "Like all new technology, we’re struggling to use it correctly," "But why would we use something that plays on demonstrably false fears and has so many negative side effects?" "The rise of fear-based social media apps might also have to do with the decline of local news." [bold text not included in original sentences]

Notice all the "cans" and similar words used to suggest that the most negative possibility is likely correct. This is easily identified manipulation.

Of course Rani brings in an 'expert' to tell us that "These apps foment fear around crime, which feeds into existing biases and racism and largely reinforces stereotypes around skin color."

That same expert is further quoted that there's "very deep research" indicating we're all predisposed to mentally picture a black person when we hear about or read about a crime. Oh, I'm sure there is this sort of biased research, especially if it will contribute to the reader further believing this hit piece, and the overarching Leftian narrative that the entire country is teeming with white racists who hate "people of color."

Then another convenient expert is quoted, telling us that these apps don't actually help us as advertised, but instead simply reflect our own ugly biases, an accusation easily leveled at a nebulous crowd, but not so easily proven on an individual basis.

Other articles are cited, from Motherboard, Vice, and The Outline, all of which are not necessarily about racism but conveniently refer to possibilities that Rani found advantageous to her point.

At the end of all this, I have to ponder:

Why take an app that millions of people enjoy and rely upon, and falsely cast it as racist and fear-mongering, based on the questionable use of it by only a handful of people?

Are some of us losing our senses of proportion and accurate perception?

Or is the answer a bit more sinister, such as a desire to dismantle something that people use to protect each other without government or media control?

Wednesday, April 24, 2019

"The Dark" is a movie I found while searching for better-than-average horror movies for a friend of mine. I'm trying to keep batting 1.000, as my last recommendation to him (The Loved Ones) was another big hit in his estimation.

The Dark deals with the subject of monsters.

A few of the actors, including the
kidnapped boy Alex, were a tad less than adequate in their craft, but it
didn't ruin it for me. There was no Academy Award-winning writing, but it was original and I enjoyed it. There were several tense moments that weren't cheapened by cheesy jump scares. It was slow paced at times, but I was never bored.

The cinematography was well done. There was an ominous quality to the protagonist at times that could only have been accomplished by the dim lighting and facial angles utilized.The reason why The Dark is unique is because it is first and foremost a lurid fairy tale, as opposed to a simple ax-murder-fest. The protagonist is literally back from the grave, and the haunted woods her house stands in are the best unspoken explanation for the miraculous event. The pictures she draws and the sounds she hears suggest there is more to the story than mere retribution from the grave, but unfortunately we're not enlightened in that regard.The Dark is complex because, despite Mina's face being convincingly hideous, the monster in this story isn't truly a monster. In addition, the subtle aspects of the kidnapped boy's aversion to rescue are a reminder that Stockholm Syndrome is a powerful factor when combined with believable threats to one's family.

Then there's the discussion afterwards: how many monsters did you count in the movie?

The story is a bit poignant and contains a positive ending, which many fans of horror are not disposed to enjoy from the genre. Yes, there is murder, even of what appear to be innocent people. Tragedy begets tragedy in real life, so the obscure moral of this dark fairy tale is that the cycle doesn't have to continue.

There were several interesting hints of Mina's
transformation, including her attempts to burn her hand with
the lighter. Can people rise from the dead in real life and become scary
monsters?

Nah, but if they did, it would be nice if they all ended up like Mina.

I'm in general agreement that in a free country, a business can reserve the right to refuse service in most situations. The music publishers denying Unplanned across the board could still be defended from that position. This is why the cake-baking controversy ended with the Supreme Court ruling in favor of the baker in the Colorado case.

This is why I think it rude and wrong, but it was still legal for the Red Hen restaurant to refuse service to Sarah Sanders.

What isn't being adequately considered is the overall effect this sort of group think censorship has on those watching from the sidelines. There is certainly a difference between multiple bakeries to choose from, but only one official avenue by which published songs may be utilized in a movie.

The message is clear: you are either pro-abortion in the entertainment industry, or you are out. Attempting to confuse the issue by calling it "pro-choice" does not ennoble the end result.

Then there's the obvious conclusion one should draw from Unplanned's struggle with those who want to control what the public sees and hears:

Pro-choice supporters are afraid. There can be no other explanation for the deliberate blocking of such an inoffensive film.

So honestly, what are they afraid of? That people will be shown, without condemnation nor demonization, what it truly means to abort a child, and within the context of an authentic setting?

Consider the vegan tactic of showing footage of animals being slaughtered for food. If after viewing cows being slaughtered for example, the viewers continue to eat beef, at least now they're aware of what it took to get that hamburger to their plate.

But the media industry complex does not want you to possess analogous information regarding abortion.Why not?